electronica: Maxim demonstrates Pocket IO PLC with soccer ball

Industry 4.0 and wearables are the key areas of focus for Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. at electronica 2016, where they’ll be presenting exactly how they’re empowering design innovation across the rapidly expanding industrial and healthcare markets.

Maxim’s offering claims to address loss productivity, the key driver of Industry 4.0. Their Pocket IO programmable logic controller (PLC) development platform transforms traditional manufacturing methodologies to achieve the dream of 24/7 manufacturing efficiency. It does this via a combination of adaptive manufacturing and distributed control – all driven by real-time intelligence.

Electing for a unique (and fun) way to demonstrate these capabilities, Maxim will primarily employ a soccer ball. It’s taken the sport decades to deploy reliable technology just to tell if the ball has crossed the goal line, so real-time measurements of trajectories, bounce height, and circumference measurements demonstrate a significant step forward. A sneak preview of their Pocket IO soccer ball demonstration can be found here.

Sticking with the healthy living theme, Maxim knows the challenges of wearable design well. So many are desperate to jump on the wave and get products to market, but there’s no avoiding the traditional proof-of-concept and prototyping phases. Maxim’s compact hSensor platform aims to slash that development time by up to six months. All designed around the ARM mbed platform, it’s a highly suitable and flexible IoT Device platform combining the OS, cloud services, tools, and developer eco-system in one.